Falling is an easy thing.
I can tell stories to anyone who asks about how I met who or how I fell for this guy and that guy, but if I were to choose what to share, I’d pick that one story from my fourth and last year as a high school student. It was, or is, the story that stood out among all my other stories of relationships and love for it was the most pathetic.
So I fell for this guy.
It was sad. Of all the boys that I could ever feel attracted to, my brain chose Edison.
Aside from the fact that his name sounded like that of an old man’s five years back at seventeen, he was also everything that wasn’t right for me.
I was a part of the so-called popular students in high school. Neither was I part of the famous group of students who joined science contests nor was I one of the rich kids who went to country clubs out of town for the purposes of social gatherings of the proper. Rather, I was just one of the girls in long-sleeved fitted tops and short skirts who cheered for the football players in school. I sat with the other athletes at the center table in the cafeteria- I was even someone who dated one of the jocks. I was one of those girls whose moves seemed to be calculated deliberately, expertly, and precisely to determine who’s going to be prom queen.
However, despite my high spot in the discriminating high school social strata determined mostly by other students’ envy, I wasn’t able to get away from the appeal of someone who was completely out of the social circle where I belonged.
Edison Suarez was my school mate and batch mate since freshmen year but never did I notice him as what we called boyfriend material until the fifth month of our senior year. I knew him only by name but after I had a petty time staring at his eyes for a few seconds when he asked me if I saw the school’s Guidance Counselor, I decided to know more about him other than his Spanish surname and the several subjects he took with me.
I had an obsession with nice eyes and I mean eyes in faces of guys my age. I know every obsession isn’t normal and I had it really, really bad which explains why I used to look at guys’ mouths when they’re talking instead of looking at their eyes because once I found a boy’s eyes attractive, I’d be a love struck teenager. Edison’s eyes were so brown and though they looked a little too dilated, I found myself wanting to stare at them for a longer time. It was awkward that he had to repeat his question the third time before I answered. He didn’t seem to notice that I was momentarily hypnotized by his eyes because when I stupidly answered, “Maybe in the staff meeting?” he just said okay, thanks then walked away. It was even weirder that it was the first time we talked to each other outside class and I was falling after our pathetic exchange of fragmented sentences.
Weeks passed after the fateful incident and I was still not over it. I couldn’t tell any of my so-called friends about him because I knew they would just discourage me for we were too different from each other.
While Edison was the kind of guy who knows how to use his smile in a charming way, I was the girl who’s prettier with a passive expression on my face. When I smile, my cheeks expose lines that look like a cat’s whiskers and it’s just that I used to wear braces and when they were gone, they left me with an abnormal smile that other people found funny. Back then, I had to maintain the pretty label because the mock-hungry students do know how to humiliate so smiled less.
I often observed Edison from afar and the more I looked at him, the more I found him adorable even though he didn’t play basketball, football, baseball, or hockey. But I knew that he plays any sport with a racket or a paddle. He was fetching but unpopular because he didn’t play the sports that were sponsored by the school. He never wore varsity jackets. He just had his tennis racket and I often saw him holding a ping pong ball in his hand and I assumed he used it as a hand massager or a makeshift stress ball.
